3 Links I Love: Air Berlin Restructures, American’s CIO, So Long Vin

Far-reaching restructuring of airberlin to deliver long-term growth – Air Berlin
The long-rumored restructuring is here. Air Berlin, long shredding money, is going to remake itself into something that… probably will just lose more money. It’ll shrink, sending up to 40 airplanes to Lufthansa (most under Eurowings, some under Austrian) and those will be operated by Air Berlin crews. This helps Lufthansa lose more money too, but I suppose it keeps a defense out there to stave off true low cost carriers from eating Lufthansa’s lunch. (The markets will suck too much for them to bother.)

But back to Air Berlin, it’s going to split off its leisure business (how it actually got started back in the day) into a separate unit which it’ll probably look to sell. What’s left (after massive layoffs) is a carrier focusing on business markets from Dusseldorf and Berlin. Good luck.

Vin Scully for Continental Airlines – Circa 1970 – YouTube
This weekend marks the final three Dodger games to ever be called by Vin Scully. It’s the end of a 60+ year announcing career that began when they were back in Brooklyn. It’s just incredible. It was hard for me to find a way to give my own little tribute to Vin Scully until I ran across this video in the Eye on L.A. Aviation newsletter.

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10 Responses to 3 Links I Love: Air Berlin Restructures, American’s CIO, So Long Vin

Quite sure the “pub” was gone by the time I was flying in the meatball planes in the 1980’s. Growing up my father would tell stories about how great flying was in the “good old days” and the pub was one of those stories. Crazy that they were doing that on relatively short hops from LA to Denver, Chicago & Houston. Today on much longer routes you’re lucky to get a couple extra inches of legroom in a 737 or 320. Sigh…

The pub on the CO DC-10 was there because of the problems with seats in the back of the aircraft. The Early DC-10’s had an issue with the autopilot that produced a very pronounced Dutch Roll, which could make the ride in the back of the aircraft very unpleasant. Douglas eventually did sort out the autopilot problem and that got rid of the Dutch roll. The Pub disappeared soon after. AA had Piano bar in the back of the DC10 for a while for exactly the same reason, and it also disappeared shortly after the autopilot was sorted out.

Vin Scully was a master story teller. His style resembled a conversation one would have at home. On the other hand, Harry Caray’s storytelling style was more like having a conversation over a few cold ones in a bar. Sports broadcasting doesn’t have the personalities it did in the past.